Tag: writing

Who’s Afraid of Alice Woolf?

Ben PrestonLeave a comment 
A few years ago I was at a recovery unit for people with mental health problems. At a creative writing group we were asked to write about a friend. How we met and our relationship with them. This was my contribution:

One of my closest friends is Alice. We met about ten years ago in the Costa café at Mornington Crescent. I'd been on a ward at St Pancras Hospital for nearly a year and was being treated with huge doses of anti-psychotic medication. My self-esteem was barely existent and I felt misunderstood by everyone. Alice was a stylish young woman with a pair of designer sunglasses and a chipper middle class voice. We were both regulars in the café and I initially felt too frightened to talk to her. 

A decade later we are firm friends. I send Alice the poems I write and we speak on the phone regularly. Alice is a clever woman and a well-read woman from a literary family. She is the closest female friend I've ever had and she knows things about me that I've never told anyone else. I trust her judgement about the things I tell her and she knows all about my involvement with mental health services. I know she's in my corner.

Yeats Poem

Ben PrestonLeave a comment 
I first came across this poem at sixth-form college. They gave us a photocopied booklet of some of Yeats’ most famous poems. This is one of the ones that stuck in my head particularly. I remember it came from relatively early in his career and reflects his love of Irish folklore. Yeats wanted to reinforce the national identity of the Irish people to make his country stronger. The opening four lines struck me and I remember reciting them years later. I also remembered the theme of the poem.

I remember pouring over it late at night in my teenage bedroom. I used to be afflicted by insomnia and would sometimes wander the suburban streets pacing out my adolescent angst. The poem has a kind of gentle magic and a musicality. The trout that morphs into a “glimmering girl” transfigures the “fire” in his head into something beautiful and magical. He then pursues his muse through the ancient countryside.

The poem has a resonance for me. I feel I might use the skill I’ve developed in creative writing to express myself. This would prevent my voice being smothered by people who think they can speak for me. Hopefully people might see the real me. Not someone personified as a delusional, thought-disordered schizophrenic.